Teachers' Day 2013

Gorgor loves to do art & craft work. So I try to arrange some project for him when there is a special occasion coming up e.g. a family member's birthday or festive seasons. It's also a great excuse for Mummy to indulge in art without Grandma nagging at me for 'wasting time' :p

This Teachers' Day I wanted to do something extra special for his form teacher Indira. In my opinion she is the BEST teacher at his preschool and she is wonderful in disciplining the kids. Always on-the-ball, professional yet warm. One look at her and you are convinced she knows what she is doing. Definitely a teacher respected by the parents.

Also, we didn't know if boy would be switching schools. Initially expected Teacher Indira to move up to K1 with the class next year, but MFS / MCYS (whatever) changed the rules so that she can no longer teach the upper levels without a degree. Despite her 18 years of experience.

*pause and PUI!!!!!!!!!! *

And that was why we wanted to switch schools. Did not have confidence in the remaining teachers. Let's see how now.


PART A

Anyway, so I found this project online a long time ago and had been collecting baby food jars for the purpose. A bit difficult cos I don't let Didi eat that gross stuff after trying it with Gorgor years ago.

http://www.designmom.com/2010/12/diy-photo-snowglobes/

Designmom's tutorial looked so easy and beautiful. Bleah. Mine didn't go as smoothly.

First, 3 baby food jars. Cos boy had 3 favourite teachers. We had to hide in the bedroom to work cos Didi kept wanting to 'stick one leg' haha.

Mummy prepared the photo strips using photos taken with the teachers during this year. Followed the measurement of 1.5 inches by 5.75 inches. But instead of laminating with tape, I chose to do hot lamination as it would be more waterproof. Luckily Papa is a teacher and has such stuff at home.

Took out my stash of assorted shiny stuff and glitter, which I have not had the courage to let boy meddle with so far. GLITTER!!! Can die trying to get one tiny speck off his face, can you imagine if he gets it all over himself, or worse, in his hair? *OCD Mummy*

Boy chose to gift one type of shiny flake to each teacher, instead of mixing them like I expected.

Heh heh the glitter was old and hard and stuck inside its bottle. So Mummy used that as an excuse and volunteered to help. My *cough cough* stolen *cough* Starbucks stirrer was very useful to dig out the glitter.

Boy then poured in water, and I added in some clear light corn syrup (bought from Phoon Huat) leftover from a previous project.

Lesson 1: 
Insert photo first before the shiny flakes and glitter. Cos the height of the photo ring blocks stuff from swimming around properly.

Lesson 2:
Use more corn syrup. Maybe half-half with water. Else not enough movement. However, clear corn syrup still made the water a bit cloudy. Will use glycerin next time.

Lesson 3:
Use enamel paint to paint the cap. Don't be a lazy bum. Mummy was too lazy to go out to buy new enamel paint so tried with acrylic. Haha doesn't work. See the red cap has peeling paint already.

Lesson 4:
Hot laminated photo strip is VERY hard once formed into ring. Had to adjust a few times for the correct circumference to fit the inside of the bottle yet be small enough to go in through the bottleneck. Ate away a bit of my photograph.

Mummy had to patch things up the next day while boy was in school.

Covered up with my Japanese washi paper and hot glued the ribbon. I love my hot glue gun!

TADA!!!

There were some glue remnants left on the bottle that Mummy never got around to removing properly. So stuck on a Spiderman sticker to cover it. Convinced myself that it'll help the teachers remember that "this is the boy who's crazy about Spiderman" ;)

Had so little faith in my hot-glue-cap-affixing-skill that I put the globe in ziplock before wrapping LOL!


PART B

We had to do something for the other teachers too cos boy didn't want them to feel left out. So I went for this:

http://happyhooligans.ca/paper-towel-butterflies/

Been wanting to let boy try using a dropper in art activites cos his fine motor skills are not that good. Finally found some droppers at Unity after running around a few pharmacies like Guardian and Watsons that apparently don't sell at many branches. 70 cents each.

Here we are hiding from Didi outside the master bedroom toilet.

I used only the primary colours i.e. red, blue and yellow food colourings cos I didn't want the towels to have too many colours. And also cos I know after a while boy will mix all the colours into BLACK -_-"

We tried doing secondary colours green, orange and purple too. But in a rush it was difficult to mix them nicely as what you see isn't what you get with food colouring. So not very successful.

Boy got carried away colouring the newspaper black.... *Mummy bangs head on door*

So Mummy finished the production line and laid the works out to dry.

Next day we were supposed to complete the works into butterflies. But boy was too happy with his belated Spiderman present, and my sister came over to play with him. So Mummy have to do again :p

Stuck scotchtape about 2/3 way up two straws to join them. Lazy Mummy again chose to use the stash of straws I had, instead of buying new bendy straws. Manually bend lor!

Fold the towel up accordian-style, and attach a twist-tie in the centre. Wrap twist-tie around the part of straw that has the scotchtape and twist til no sharp edges and trim.

TADA!!! Marvel surveys the goods.

One happy customer! Haha.